The next evening,
An exhausting day filled with teaching ettiquite, literature and some walking .
I entered my chamber with dread curling tight around my spine. I had buried the words somone poured to me from last night, watching the words curl into smoke as though by fire I could undo their existence.
Yet in disbelief , I am sure it was all in my head Yet the ash had lingered on my fingertips like a stain that refused to be washed away.
I thought perhaps it had been fatigue, or fancy, or the cruel trick of a restless mind too long intoxicated by ink. Yet when I settled at my desk, the quill still resting where I had left it, I found something waiting upon the parchment.
A letter.
The paper was mine, the seal broken, though
I swore by heaven and earth I had left it blank. My hand trembled as I lifted it, the candlelight trembling with me.
The handwriting was jagged, like a blade pressed too hard into flesh.
"Do you remember when you first breathed me into life?
A boy, starved and shivering, cast upon the streets.
You made me kneel in mud while others feasted.
You gave me hunger, but never bread.
You gave me eyes, but forced them always to watch joy that was never mine.
Did you laugh, I wonder, when you wrote my suffering?
Did it please you to give me pain for your readers' delight?"
"I was not born cruel. You wrote me cruel. And though I bear the name of villain, tell me, my Lady Author, was I ever given a choice?
Or was I doomed from my first line to bleed for you?"
I let the letter fall, but its voice did not fall with it. I heard him, inside the chamber, inside my chest, as if he crouched at my feet, whispering up through the cracks in the floorboards.
The candle hissed low, and the storm outside answered him with its fists against the glass.
I told myself it was madness. That no ink could write itself, no figment could breathe into form. And yet my fingers shook so violently that the quill snapped in my grasp, spilling ink across my skirts like blood.
I snatched the letter again, unable to stop myself, reading on though each word felt like a blade drawn slow across the skin.
"When you placed the dagger in my hand, did you think me wicked for using it? When you clothed me in shadow, did you curse me for being unseen? I was your creation, and yet you abandoned me. Do you know what it is to suffer forever, with no end but the one you choose for me? I was made to be hated, and so I became hate itself."
"But I ask you now, Lady Anna Whitford
did I not play the role well?
Did I satisfy your audience?
Did I thrill them, frighten them, sicken them with my cruelty?
Am I not, then, your most faithful child?"
Tears pricked my eyes before I understood they had fallen. My villain ,my tragic, monstrous villain spoke as though he lived, and each syllable struck me with guilt so heavy I could scarce breathe.
The fire had burned to embers. The candle drooped, its wax pooling like wasted hours, and I sat alone with his letter in my hands.
And yet, I could not bring myself to destroy it.
For though his words were accusation, though his voice carried only bitterness, there was sorrow in it too. Sorrow like the wounded cry of a child asking only to be held.
The villain I had written into darkness was reaching for me
begging me to see him, to acknowledge him not as a monster but as something more.
And God help me, I wanted to answer.